Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity

Policymakers are attempting to contain global warming at less than 2°C. New estimates from a Norwegian project on climate calculations indicate this target may be more attainable than many experts have feared.

The researchers have arrived at an estimate of 1.9°C as the most likely level of warming. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Internationally renowned climate researcher Caroline Leck of Stockholm University has evaluated the Norwegian project and is enthusiastic.

“These results are truly sensational,” says Dr Leck. “If confirmed by other studies, this could have far-reaching impacts on efforts to achieve the political targets for climate.”

Temperature rise is levelling off

After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise.

It is the focus on this post-2000 trend that sets the Norwegian researchers’ calculations on global warming apart.

Sensitive to greenhouse gases

Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much the global mean temperature is expected to rise if we continue increasing our emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

CO2 is the primary greenhouse gas emitted by human activity. A simple way to measure climate sensitivity is to calculate how much the mean air temperature will rise if we were to double the level of overall CO2 emissions compared to the world’s pre-industrialised level around the year 1750.

If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at our current rate, we risk doubling that atmospheric CO2 level in roughly 2050.

Mutual influences

A number of factors affect the formation of climate development. The complexity of the climate system is further compounded by a phenomenon known as feedback mechanisms, i.e. how factors such as clouds, evaporation, snow and ice mutually affect one another.

Uncertainties about the overall results of feedback mechanisms make it very difficult to predict just how much of the rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature is due to manmade emissions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the climate sensitivity to doubled atmospheric CO2 levels is probably between 2°C and 4.5°C, with the most probable being 3°C of warming.

In the Norwegian project, however, researchers have arrived at an estimate of 1.9°C as the most likely level of warming.

Manmade climate forcing

“In our project we have worked on finding out the overall effect of all known feedback mechanisms,” says project manager Terje Berntsen, who is a professor at the University of Oslo’s Department of Geosciences and a senior research fellow at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO). The project has received funding from the Research Council of Norway’s Large-scale Programme on Climate Change and its Impacts in Norway (NORKLIMA).

“We used a method that enables us to view the entire earth as one giant ‘laboratory’ where humankind has been conducting a collective experiment through our emissions of greenhouse gases and particulates, deforestation, and other activities that affect climate.”

For their analysis, Professor Berntsen and his colleagues entered all the factors contributing to human-induced climate forcings since 1750 into their model. In addition, they entered fluctuations in climate caused by natural factors such as volcanic eruptions and solar activity. They also entered measurements of temperatures taken in the air, on ground, and in the oceans.

The researchers used a single climate model that repeated calculations millions of times in order to form a basis for statistical analysis. Highly advanced calculations based on Bayesian statistics were carried out by statisticians at the Norwegian Computing Center.

2000 figures make the difference

When the researchers at CICERO and the Norwegian Computing Center applied their model and statistics to analyse temperature readings from the air and ocean for the period ending in 2000, they found that climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration will most likely be 3.7°C, which is somewhat higher than the IPCC prognosis.

But the researchers were surprised when they entered temperatures and other data from the decade 2000-2010 into the model; climate sensitivity was greatly reduced to a “mere” 1.9°C.

Professor Berntsen says this temperature increase will first be upon us only after we reach the doubled level of CO2 concentration (compared to 1750) and maintain that level for an extended time, because the oceans delay the effect by several decades.

We used a method that enables us to view the entire earth as one giant ‘laboratory’ where humankind has been conducting a collective experiment through our emissions of greenhouse gases and particulates, deforestation, and other activities that affect climate, explains professor Terje Berntsen at UiO. (Photo: UiB) Natural changes also a major factor

The figure of 1.9°C as a prediction of global warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration is an average. When researchers instead calculate a probability interval of what will occur, including observations and data up to 2010, they determine with 90% probability that global warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration would lie between 1.2°C and 2.9°C.

This maximum of 2.9°C global warming is substantially lower than many previous calculations have estimated. Thus, when the researchers factor in the observations of temperature trends from 2000 to 2010, they significantly reduce the probability of our experiencing the most dramatic climate change forecast up to now.

Professor Berntsen explains the changed predictions:

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.

“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now.”

Climate issues must be dealt with

Terje Berntsen emphasises that his project’s findings must not be construed as an excuse for complacency in addressing human-induced global warming. The results do indicate, however, that it may be more within our reach to achieve global climate targets than previously thought.

Regardless, the fight cannot be won without implementing substantial climate measures within the next few years.

Sulphate particulates

The project’s researchers may have shed new light on another factor: the effects of sulphur-containing atmospheric particulates.

Burning coal is the main way that humans continue to add to the vast amounts of tiny sulphate particulates in the atmosphere. These particulates can act as condensation nuclei for cloud formation, cooling the climate indirectly by causing more cloud cover, scientists believe. According to this reasoning, if Europe, the US and potentially China reduce their particulate emissions in the coming years as planned, it should actually contribute to more global warming.

But the findings of the Norwegian project indicate that particulate emissions probably have less of an impact on climate through indirect cooling effects than previously thought.

So the good news is that even if we do manage to cut emissions of sulphate particulates in the coming years, global warming will probably be less extreme than feared.

About the project

Geophysicists at the research institute CICERO collaborated with statisticians at the Norwegian Computing Center on a novel approach to global climate calculations in the project “Constraining total feedback in the climate system by observations and models”. The project received funding from the Research Council of Norway’s NORKLIMA programme.The researchers succeeded in reducing uncertainty around the climatic effects of feedback mechanisms, and their findings indicate a lowered estimate of probable global temperature increase as a result of human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.The project researchers were able to carry out their calculations thanks to the free use of the high-performance computing facility in Oslo under the Norwegian Metacenter for Computational Science (Notur). The research project is a prime example of how collaboration across subject fields can generate surprising new findings.

187 thoughts on “Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity”

I cringe every time I hear about Bayesian statistics being employed. Such statistics amount to
educated (or not so educated) guesses about what someone thinks the values are, presumably
incorporating knowledge that he has, and weighted according to more educated guessing.

I still insist that future carbon emissions are going to be drastically reduced simply as a matter of advanced technology in personal vehicles (they’re going electric, just as fast as batteries can be reduced in price) and, hopefully, widespread nuclear power. Assuming heavy future carbon emissions is just plain dumb, in my opinion.

1) It is not worse than we thought.
2) It is not even as bad as we thought.
3) But pay no mind to the data that falsifies our predictions of doom. We are all still doomed and have to take drastic action.
4) Please keep sending us money so we can continue to study this dangerous problem.

Seems to be part of an ever growing back tracking on Co2 sensitivity, if this come from an increase in temperature’s in the 1990s and a halt in 2000s what would a sustained drop in temperatures do to there projections, maybe we shall see soon enough.

The results of my investigations prove that this cooling will accelerate, because we are on a curve, curling down. So the next two or three decades will become successively cooler.
For those interested in reading the truth about global warming and global cooling see here:

The paper on which this is based (annoyingly the news release doesn’t say) may behttp://t.co/SAC5YSR5
If so, it says sensitivity is around 1.9C, see Fig 6, and the news release is wrong to say that it depends so much on whether or not the last 10 yrs are included (compare fig 6 a and c)

How exactly is this good news?
When amelioration was unobtainable this undermined the drive to impose restrictions on us that would achieve nothing.
If this makes it seem ameliorations are attainable it only strengthens the hand of those who want to control our lives.
I dont give a fig for “the environment” or what happens when Im gone.I only care about surviving the present economic oppression.
This isnt going to help.

Well, of course, it is essential to lower their estimates of climate sensitivity – otherwise it would be too late to stop 2 degrees of heating and politicians could no longer coerce the public to accept further direct and indirect taxes by scaring them with mention of tipping points. Now they can go back to their mantra of 2 decades/2 years/2 months/etc to save the Earth!

Still, it is nice to see that the science has been so completely settled all along.

Sorry a tad OT but Mr. Watts would you please add a page to the reference pages on ” Ocean Acidification”. It is clear the warmists have lost the temperature scare and are moving in droves to the CO2 cause the oceans to die meme. I have had several debates but require better inform ation to continue to be successful in public forums. Thanks

The part where it is stated “Regardless, the fight cannot be won without implementing substantial climate measures within the next few years.” seems rather weird especially when the latest science appears to confirm that we should be trying to double the CO2 concentration for a better world.

Being sarcastic:
We need money to continue in our jobs so we added the following paragraph to our report which really shows that it’s better to do nothing:

“Climate issues must be dealt with Terje Berntsen emphasises that his project’s findings must not be construed as an excuse for complacency in addressing human-induced global warming. The results do indicate, however, that it may be more within our reach to achieve global climate targets than previously thought. Regardless, the fight cannot be won without implementing substantial climate measures within the next few years.”

I find it hard to believe that only carbon dioxide is the sole forcer of temperature change..when there are so many other gases such as methane and water vapor that are equally or more important and forget the input by the sun and ocean currents

‘Policymakers’ used to be my elected representatives (who wrote the law, enacted legislation, etc.) … who are they now?

Elected representatives are accountable to the people (to varying degrees, obviously) who elected them (voted on every 2, 4 or 6 years depending on the office) … how are today’s policymakers held accountable, or responsive to the people and THEIR desires?

Are we talking about the bureaucrats who infest -er- inhabit the various federal (and state, etc) agencies that carry out enacted legislation, or somebody else?

“Burning coal is the main way that humans continue to add to the vast amounts of tiny sulphate particulates in the atmosphere. These particulates can act as condensation nuclei for cloud formation, cooling the climate indirectly by causing more cloud cover, scientists believe. According to this reasoning, if Europe, the US and potentially China reduce their particulate emissions in the coming years as planned, it should actually contribute to more global warming.”

Priceless.
It’s a darn good thing the science is settled, otherwise studies like this one might upset a lot of political apple carts.

They used a method that allows them to view the entire earth as a giant laboratory? What did they think the rest of the methods use? A single thermometer on the back of a donkey wandering around Afghanistan?

Then with all the data up to 2000 they come up with sensitivity of 3.7 but then they add in the data post 2000 it drops to 1.9

Interpretation? Their model is wrong. It gets before 2000 wrong and adding post 2000 data to it produces a radically different number. When adding in less than 10% of the data cuts your model estimate in half, it is a good sign that your model is trash.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Until we know, in detail, all the characterisitcs of natural variations of global temperatures, it is impossible to estimate climate sensitivity in this manner. Until we have an actual way of measuring climate sensitivity, these guesses merely recognize that the previous estimates, which were claimed to be accurate by the IPCC, are merely only guesses. No-one has the slightest idea what the value for climate sensitivity is. My estimate that, since there is no CO2 signal in any modern temperature/time graph, the value of climate sensitivity is probably indistinguishable from zero, is a much simpler way of doing the estimations, and is probably as good as any other guess.

The really, really amusing thing about this is the enormous impact that a tiny timespan has had on the estimate (which is absolutely on the right track). And that timespan is not “finished”. Every year with basically neutral temperature at this point shaves another 0.1 C off of the overall expected sensitivity, at least down to the 1-1.4C expected from CO_2 only, at least 0.3 to 0.4 of which we’ve already experienced as CO_2 went from 300 to 400 ppm.

Indeed, that’s the pace — 1.2 C total warming by the time CO_2 gets to 600 ppm. Maybe. But we really have only a tiny segment of good, tamper-proof data (RSS or UAH, take your pick). If they remain flat for another decade, or go down, that will completely alter the predictions. If they go up, or sharply up, that will completely alter the predictions.

Note well, if the climate remains flat, AR6 is going to reduce sensitivity to less than 2 C just as AR5 is dropping it well below 3C — nobody believes the extreme predictions any more. The IPCC simply is unwilling to face how meaningless all of these predictions are, given their extreme statistical sensitivity to new data as it comes in.

Off topic, but this morning on cspan they had a Reuters reporter taking questions on the drought. When the question of whether global warming has any influence, the reporter mentioned droughts in the 50s and the 80s and pretty much blamed cycles. I nearly fell out of my chair. I believe the ship jumping is becoming an epidemic.

I dunno, is it just me, or does this seem yet more of the ‘gradual climbdown’ over recent months?
Their hypothesis of CO2 being the primary driver has been fairly clearly falsified due to lack of warming despite significant CO2 increase and that hurts them!
or – if they want to claim this current lack of warming is due to natural variability, then the previous warming could also be due to natural variability – and that hurts them too!
it just strikes me they are desperate to find something they can turn too – but the simple fact remains, that the data (even fudged data) is not showing what they need it to show.
Now would be a good time to record the names of all the alarmists, along with any screencaps of their actions – as in due course, they will all be reversing course and claiming they were misled, etc, etc.
What if the economy still doesn’t recover after all that wasted money on AGW ? – I can well imagine Jones, Hansen et al being physically forced to eat their words in a few years time by the impoverished folk they have ‘created’! The sounds of several hundred million cold starving folk, baying for blood must be beginning to haunt their dreams!

arthur4563 says:
January 25, 2013 at 7:12 am
“I still insist that future carbon emissions are going to be drastically reduced simply as a matter of advanced technology in personal vehicles (they’re going electric, just as fast as batteries can be reduced in price)”

More Post-Normal thinking, OY! If the methodology used to derive the so called “Climate Sensitivity” was valid, then it would be independent on the set of data used, as long as the size of the domain is greater then zero. So what happens to the derived figure when data from 2010 to 2013?

These jokers are just trying to keep CO2 reduction a viable tool in the Marxist war against prosperity by explaining away the failure of temperatures to raise as expected. They showed their hand in these paragraphs:

‘“These results are truly sensational,” says Dr Leck. “If confirmed by other studies, this could have far-reaching impacts on efforts to achieve the political targets for climate.”’

and

“Terje Berntsen emphasises that his project’s findings must not be construed as an excuse for complacency in addressing human-induced global warming. The results do indicate, however, that it may be more within our reach to achieve global climate targets than previously thought.

Regardless, the fight cannot be won without implementing substantial climate measures within the next few years.”

Circa 2020 — Climate Scientists announced today that they have updated their model with
data from the period 2010 – 2020 and are very surprised that the model outputs a climate
sensitivity of 1.4125.
Scientists were reportedly very excited that the lower sensitivity implied that emissions
control policies were now even closer within reach, but cautioned that we should not become
complacent, and that further study was necessary.
/sarc

“Policymaker” is standard term from the Marxist lexicon that encapsulates a concept that exists within the Marxist world-view. Like most Marxist jargon, what it appears to mean and what it means to the Marxist are different. In this case, the term is used to identify those pressure points that the Marxist activist can target in order to achieve their goal of the enslavement of mankind.

Whenever you read such terminology, you can be pretty sure that you are reading something embedded within the Marxist world-view. Even if the writer is not aware of it. Marxist have had such an influence on our society that even conservative thought is polluted with this non-sense.

It would seem that Norway, being at fairly high latitudes, should be more concerned about the prospect of oncoming global cooling as indicated by the odd current behavior of sunspot cycle 24. Of course CO2 assists the sun in warming us in a minor manner, so in 30 or 40 years will Norwegians be welcoming all the CO2 that can be economically produced?

I cringe every time I hear about Bayesian statistics being employed. Such statistics amount to
educated (or not so educated) guesses about what someone thinks the values are, presumably
incorporating knowledge that he has, and weighted according to more educated guessing.”
I wonder if the discussion between learned statisticians at Bishop Hill has any bearing on the use of Bayesian statistics in this study.http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/1/25/uniform-priors-and-the-ipcc.html
Nick Lewis and Steve Jewson chime in with advice on why not to use flat prior, but Jeffreys’ Prior instead.

Each new ‘study’ ratchets down the climate sensitivity estimate. In fact, sensitivity to 2xCO2 is statistically zero. This shows why. Any effect from adding more CO2 is lost in the noise. It is simply too small to measure. Thus, the “carbon” scare is falsified.

I am listening but I can’t make out the sound of any apologies…Nope, in fact Lindzen, Spencer, and others that have been estimating sensitivity at less than 2C are still being denigrated by the consensus. Of course the politics haven’t changed…

Yawn. Mostly what this confirms is that for all their insisting climate models are fancy and robust, they’re really just “we expect what’s been happening will keep happening”, and aren’t truly independently predictive at all.

I did not say that sensitivity would be zero. Read what I wrote more carefully.

As Willis points out, CO2 is a very minor 3rd order forcing that is swamped by second-order forcings — which are in turn swamped by first-order forcings. Each order is at least an order of magnitude larger than the previous one.

CO2 simply does not matter at current and projected concentrations. More CO2 is a net benefit. More global warming is also better. Too bad CO2 is no longer contributing to that in any measurable way.

Then with all the data up to 2000 they come up with sensitivity of 3.7 but then they add in the data post 2000 it drops to 1.9 … a good sign that [their] model is trash.
—
You beat me to it. That point stuck out like a sore thumb. If their model were indeed able to properly separate natural variability from human influences, the sensitivity should not change when the time series is shortened or extended.

The results of my investigations suggest that all warming from 1950 (when CO2 measurements began) was natural. Earth will now be cooling down until about 2038. In the next two decades NATURAL global cooling will accelerate and by 2039 we will be back to where we were in 1951.http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/01/24/our-earth-is-cooling/

Be happy. Although I suspect that for some it will not be such a happy time, shoveling snow and all that slippery jazz.

More than trash, the so called “model” is modelling nothing, because what happens in another 10 years if the temps (more than likely) go down further? Their “model’s” output will drop further — so where’s the “modelling?” This so called model is nothing of the sort but merely an echo chamber of what ever you put in. Or looking at it from another way garbage in, garbage out.

… must not be construed as an excuse for complacency in addressing human-induced global warming.

Or it could be that the leveling of 21st century temps is because the sun is a much bigger player than the modelers assume, in which case the imminent danger is cooling, not warming, but these cowards refuse to even consider the possibility. Their funding would immediately turn off, so they play along with the unplugging of the modern world. Evil.

First of all, we do not know that the 5.35 ln(2 :CO2 doubling) W/m2 forcing for CO2 is correct or that it works the same way at the surface.

It might only be 2.0 Ln(2) = +1.38 W/m2.

And then the feedbacks on that warming might easily be -1.38 W/m2 => Zero impact.

Where did the 5.35 ln(2) come from anyway?

It is really a tuned parametre based on some physics experiments in a glass bottle and from the assumptions that CO2 doubling translates into 3.0C per doubling. Nobody has measured this kind of actual impact in the atmosphere.

Feedbacks, Well the data to date does not have a significant positive water vapour feedback. It looks closer to Zero than the 7.0% per K assumed in the theory. Cloud feedback could easily be negative. Some measurements to date are showing it is negative (unless one does it using the new climate math where the signs of your actual data are just switched around the other way). The lapse rate is increasing based on the fact that the lower troposphere is warming at a slower rate than the surface and that predicted.

Most of the institutional scientists have to protect their patch from any outside predators.
For years we are told:
-It is CO2
-It can not be the sun
-The TSI is nearly constant
There is more to the solar or whatever drives it than the TSI. Only few days ago I went to some old geomagnetic data from 1990s and guess what: the Earth’s magnetic field has a strong magnetic ‘zing’ fully synchronised with the sunspot cycle:http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/GMF-SSN.htm
I doubt that any institutional scientist would whish to follow the above finding, despite fact that it is totally unknown to the either the solar or the Earth sciences.

And so the climate sensitivity, a completely artificial device created to offset problems with the AGW hypothesis, gradually approaches zero. They did the same thing with methane when it was the target used by the animal rights people against cattle. The amount of methane was so small and declining that the public simply were not impressed. As always, they manufacture an explanation that has little or nothing to do with reality. With methane they amplified its heat trapping abilities – its climate sensitivity. As I recall they claimed it was 20 times greater than CO2, which in turn was multiples greater (the numbers varied) than water vapour.

Here is a cogent explanation of why climate sensitivity of CO2 will get to zero.

Of course, to confirm my faith in climate sensitivity getting to zero, nobody has provided a record of any duration for any time period in which CO2 increases before temperature. In every single case the exact opposite occurs. This is a serious problem because the fundamental assumption of the AGW hypothesis is that CO2 causes temperature increase.

The current record is proof of the failure of this assumption. Mother Nature is not playing their game.

They used a method that allows them to view the entire earth as a giant laboratory? What did they think the rest of the methods use? A single thermometer on the back of a donkey wandering around Afghanistan?…..”””””

Well why not David; after all, that is exactly what Mother Gaia is doing. She has a thermometer in every atom or molecule so she knows what the global Temperature and climate are supposed to be from her modelling, and she always comes up with the correct result.

And why is it that based on our own ignorance there might not be some feedback mechanisms and homeostatic processes that we dont know enough about to even ask the questions of what they might be. The unknown unknowns may be raising their ugly heads only to be known in 100 years or so. How I would like to be alive in 2113 to look in the rearview mirror at all this scrambling about for answers.

Off topic, but this morning on cspan they had a Reuters reporter taking questions on the drought. When the question of whether global warming has any influence, the reporter mentioned droughts in the 50s and the 80s and pretty much blamed cycles. I nearly fell out of my chair. I believe the ship jumping is becoming an epidemic.

Henry@vukcevik
I am also convinced that it is a process on the sun that is causing the 88 year Gleisberg cycle. But remember the dates are important. I have determined (from data both NH and SH) that ozone started declining in 1951, %wise more in the SH than the NH, when warming started. Ozone started rising again in 1995 when cooling started (looking at energy-in).
To me, it is more likely the fluctuation in E-UV coming from the sun that causes the warming and cooling effects by changing the reactions that are happening on TOA , i.e. O3, HxOx and NOx are rising now, causing more back radiation of F-UV, meaning less energy going in the oceans. Hence, earth is now cooling.

As Willis also correctly pointed out, the oceans are heated by the sun, mostly. There maybe some volcanic heat coming in as well, but % wise I think this is very small.

They stopped their work in 2010. Now that we are getting into 2013 and with La Nina conditions threatening again, they may have to whittle down to 1.5 sensitivity with this added data. The asymptote seems to be ~1.0 which pretty much catches up with where sceptics are these days.

How can sensitivity be zero when the ~200 W/m2 solar is being amplified to 500 W/m2? Why would the next additional Watt see no amplification?

Thanks, lgl. Actually, this kind of behavior is not uncommon at all in governed systems. When the system is just started and is speeding up towards equilibrium, all kinds of amplification occurs. But when the system reaches equilibrium, additional forcing does nothing, because the opposing forces (cloud levels, T^4 radiation, internal losses, thunderstorms, El Nino, etc.) become stronger and stronger as the globe warms. At some point, they get to where any increase in forcing is matched by a corresponding increase in the opposing forces, so there’s no further temperature rise, and the sensitivity goes to zero.

For a physical example, nowhere on the planet does the deep ocean get much over 30°C … no matter how much energy it is getting. Crazy, huh? See here for my analysis of the ARGO floats and their verification of the global oceanic temperature maximum.

And I would challenge that assertion; Rather basic meteorological observations show that we warm faster and also cool-off faster when a dry air-mass is in place in this part of Texas vs a humid air-mass …

Simple. Meteorological. Observations. show this.

Of course, this is due to WV, a potent GHG in it’s own right and plentifully available at times.

Steven Mosher: And sensitivity to 2x c02 cannot be zero. If it were then changes in solar input would be zero.

Sensitivity to either a future doubling of CO2 or future increases in solar input could be 0. There is no physical reason why sensitivity has to be independent of the current state. Besides that, only a very simple model posits that the only effect of adding CO2 is to increase downwelling long-wave IR and that downwelling long-wave IR is perfectly equivalent to full spectrum light..

Hmm, so what they are saying is we used known results to adjust our model and then it hind cast those results correctly. Using the model with those parameters it forecast 3.7C per doubling. Checking that forecast over the next 10 years showed that it was massively in error. Adding the actual data over those 10 years to readjust the model led to a new prediction of 1.9C which again correctly hindcasts to known results.

As a result they claim the model must be right this time so please believe our new forecasts. Models are verified by making correct predictions. Here the first prediction was massively off. If in 10 years the new prediction still holds up it may be grounds to have some confidence in the model but until then their model has produced 100% wrong predictions and is thus utterly useless as a predictor. Until they can demonstrate correct forward predictions of results not known at the time of the prediction they have nothing of value. So far all they have done is elegantly proven their model was wrong.

I see what is going on here. The climate science community is going to very gradually reveal precisely what the skeptics have been saying for 20 years. Each micro step will be heralded as a brilliant and sensational bit of scientific discovery, qualifying these scientist for prestige and additional grant money. In the end, they will discover that CO2 is not a pollutant and has little impact on global temperatures. They will take credit for this ‘discovery’ and compliment themselves for saving the world from unnecessary regulations. If any warmist dies, they will let the dead one take the fall for the misinformation and proclaim that they were always skeptical of the global warming scare. They will give each other awards, honorary chairs at universities and leading positions at National Academies.

It shows how far the science has fallen when it is considered a revolutionary idea to give real world data weight in a climate model. It violates the climate change maxim of never letting facts get in the way of the theory. Truly a brave move for these researchers. /sarc off

The researchers used a single climate model that repeated calculations millions of times in order to form a basis for statistical analysis. Highly advanced calculations based on Bayesian statistics were carried out by statisticians at the Norwegian Computing Center.

All digital computers are (baring faults) completely deterministic. If you repeated the same calculations millions of times, you would get the identical result millions of times. The only way to get different results is to change the input values or include psuedo-random functions.

And as Gavin Schmidt himself has said. The outputs of climate models aren’t samples of populations and statistical methods do not apply.

It would seem that Norway, being at fairly high latitudes, should be more concerned about the prospect of oncoming global cooling as indicated by the odd current behavior of sunspot cycle 24.

That is indeed true, and I have been trying to inform my fellow Norwegians about this fact, but politicians are totally immune. We have several political parties over here, but all support the idea of CAGW. There is truly no-one to turn to.

Of course CO2 assists the sun in warming us in a minor manner, so in 30 or 40 years will Norwegians be welcoming all the CO2 that can be economically produced?

CO2 has no measurable effect on climate. The only measurable effect of CO2 in this country is Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s new year speech in 2007, declaring the Mongstad CCS (“Carbon Capture and Storage”) project would be our “moon landing”, apparently comparable only to the Apollo project. However, billions later, we will find that the landing wasn’t soft, and yes Houston, we have a problem over here.

Steven Mosher says:
January 25, 2013 at 9:39 am
“they determine with 90% probability that global warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration would lie between 1.2°C and 2.9°C.

Luke warmers.”

That’s why I said the rent seekers are queuing at the exit. No Norwegian scientist or bureaucrat, excuse me, I wanted to say policymaker, is a skeptic for all I know; they are a terribly, terribly guilt-ridden people because they earn all their money with gas and oil exports; and voluntarily try to drive electric noddycars in their glaciated country; to not deplete the batteries they install oil heaters in them. And they live under the superstition that their exports harm the planet. When they in fact help to return valuable carbon into the biosphere.

What’s that sound? Oh, that’s just the sound of the CAGW goalposts being moved. Again. Same game though. Do they really think that anyone is fooled by this?

It is aimed at the norwegian politicians. After all CICERO was founded in 1990 by former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland (now mostly busy with Agenda21). Originally, CICERO’s formal mission statement in 1990 was to «fremskaffe kunnskap som kan bidra til å løse det menneskeskapte klimaproblemet» (“acquire knowledge that can help solve the man-made climate problem.”). The assertion of an existing problem and who was supposedly to blame was built into this organisation from the very beginning. As they got criticised, the mission statement was changed in 1990 to “…med sikte på å framskaffe kunnskap som kan bidra til å redusere klimaproblemet…” (“… with a view to acquiring knowledge that can help reduce the climate problem …”).

On Bayesian statistics/inference/epistemology, I believe them completely validated by Physicist Edwin Thompson Jaynes in his masterwork, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (Cambridge University Press, (2003). ISBN 0-521-59271-2). We can watch his ‘Converging and Diverging Views’ (Eqn. 5.32) at work right here on WUWT.

I see no reason why the exact effect of CO2 doubling could not be measured directly in a lab experiment. It is only sunlight and air so is not a complicated experiment. We can measure temperature changes to a millionth of a degree so any effect could be measured.

I doubt if this experiment will be performed as I suspect the answer would be ‘zero’.

You can not heat water from above. surface tension blocks the heat very emphatically and very convincingly. Thats why there is no climate sensitivity.

So the ocean is heated from below? Funny how no one noticed that all these years …

w.

You cannot heat water with long-wave infrared radiation. It will only penetrate a few microns and at best cause the liberation (evaporation) of surface molecules – cooling the surface.

You can heat water with shorter wave radiation and UV which will penetrate a long way into the ocean. It is these shorter wavelengths that heat the ocean and of course it is those that get reflected by cloud albedo.

“On Bayesian statistics/inference/epistemology, I believe them completely validated by Physicist Edwin Thompson Jaynes in his masterwork, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (Cambridge University Press, (2003). ISBN 0-521-59271-2). We can watch his ‘Converging and Diverging Views’ (Eqn. 5.32) at work right here on WUWT.”

– – – – – –

Doug Huffman,

You are the the fourth or fifth person here at WUWT in the last two months to highly recommend Physicist Edwin Thompson Jaynes’ book ‘Probability Theory: The Logic of Science’

RMB says: January 25, 2013 at 7:42 am
“You can not heat water from above. surface tension blocks the heat very emphatically and very convincingly. Thats why there is no climate sensitivity.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
bones says: January 25, 2013 at 2:21 pm
Baloney. This is the kind of hopelessly wrong stuff that the CAGW sympathisers pray that they will find here.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When RMB says ‘heat’ he is talking about infrared radiation and therefore he is correct.

The solar radiation ‘envelope’ penetrates the ocean to 100 metres at visible wavelengths but to much shallower depths as the wavelength increases. Back radiation in the far infra-red from the Greenhouse Effect occurs at wavelengths centred around 10 micrometres, well off the scale of this chart, and cannot penetrate the ocean beyond the surface ‘skin’.

The ocean surface is approximately 3 degrees warmer than the atmosphere. Where the surface of the water is cooler than incidental in the atmosphere (by wind), the atmosphere possible micrometers from the top by conduction heat up the water, but this too will cause water evaporation, and not to warming. The evaporation boundary layer contemplates a particular temperature gradient as we will see.

Further, the upper 700 meters of the ocean for 50 times as much mass as the entire atmosphere. The specific heat of water is 4 times higher than that of air, so that possesses low water 200 times as much heat energy as the total atmosphere (for the entire ocean, this is even as much as 1200 times). It is the ocean warms the atmosphere primarily by evaporation and not vice versa.

The boundary layer of water evaporation

There is a very important phenomenon which occurs in the boundary layer of the surface of the water for evaporation occurs, where water evaporates and the layer in the atmosphere.
Below is a very nice diagram (Schematic plot or open ocean surface thermal structures) that the temperature gradient in water indicates depends on the depth below the surface. The top value on the y-axis indicates the 10 micrometers up to where IR radiation comes, the next value below it is already 1 mm deep (1000 microns) far outside the range of IR radiation.
The temperature goes up to the right, and curve (a) overnight (b) during the day.

The atmosphere cannot warm until the underlying surface warms first. The lower atmosphere is transparent to direct solar radiation, preventing it from being significantly warmed by sunlight alone. The surface atmosphere thus gets its warmth in three ways: from direct contact with the oceans; from infrared radiation off the ocean surface; and, from the removal of latent heat from the ocean by evaporation. Consequently, the temperature of the lower atmosphere is largely determined by the temperature of the ocean.

Warming the ocean is not a simple matter, not like heating a small glass of water. The first thing to remember is that the ocean is not warmed by the overlying air.

“If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at our current rate, we risk doubling that atmospheric CO2 level in roughly 2050.”

Ah, 2 times 280. So 560 ppm by 2050?
Not likely. 40 years at 4 ppm increase is 160 ppm.
Does anyone think we going to get to 3 ppm per year within a decade?
It seems 2.5 ppm is more likely, in terms of a high end, which require more
than 4 ppm in remaining 3 decades.
Probably at best 500 ppm by 2050.
But there are problems with that.
We probably see less coal use and more natural gas use in coming
decades. For economic reasons- natural gas will be cheaper to use.
Every country other US is paying too high a price for coal, and US is
reducing coal because natural gas is cheaper. And the rest of the world
is not that stupid. So within decade or so, world should be emitting less
CO2, rather than continue the mad increases.
And for most part all these wind mills and solar energy fad is increasing
CO2 emission. One might argue [wrongly] that over long term wind mills and
solar power could reduce CO2, but more wrong to imagine in short term it’s
reducing CO2 [the total CO2 emission cost for this “alternative energies” is
not being accounted for. And just like hybrid cars aren’t accounting for all
the CO2 they cause to emit [not mention their toxic waste] the alternative
energies are not accounting for all the CO2 emit- only it’s worse than
Hybids cars. But in short term, wind and solar are far worse than
making ethanol in terms causing more Co2 emissions].
So, since governments fleeing from further alternative energy subsidies [probably
mostly cause they can’t afford it- rather than any sensible reason] we will see a
global reduction of CO2 emission because this.

Now this chart uses the Actual global temperature estimates and all of the reliable CO2 estimates over the last 40 million years (shown as 3.0C per doubling of CO2). Versus the typical climate science example where they don’t use any actual data – they just make it up and ignore the actual data, or they use some climate model simulation of a fantasy climate.

The actual climate history says the climate does whatever it wants to do regardless of the CO2 level.

Technically, I think there are two big drivers – Albedo and GHGs – but you need some way to separate the two. Albedo is clearly the biggest driver in this 40 million year example.

The Bayesians, for some reason, do not think ice over Antarctica or no ice over Antarctica makes any difference. Well it certainly does to the tune of at least -2.0C to global temperatures.

The Bayesians think that ice down Chicago in the ice ages makes no difference at all while it clearly shows up to -4.0C impact.

You can not heat water from above. surface tension blocks the heat very emphatically and very convincingly. Thats why there is no climate sensitivity.”
Yes water can heat from above. Ever swum in a small river after a few hot summer days? The top 2 feet is warm but it drops a few degrees at about 2 meters down. Or how about a shallow pond or the kiddies swimming pool at a swim center.

I live in Chicago, which experienced a drought this year, that been getting normal moisture of late. (but no snow cover).
Now the MSM has been feeding me things like:
“It’s pretty rare to get below zero on the ground at O’Hare without snow on the ground,” said Richard Castro, a Romeoville-based meteorologist for the National Weather Service.
The weather service reports that between 1960 and 2010, there have been 469 days with low temperatures below zero; only 16 of those occurred with no snow on the ground.”

Stuart L
I am a stupid layman, but wonder about the effects of water vapour (clouds) when I lived in the UK cloud conditions would cause the temps to be milder (warmer) here in Philippines cloud causes cooler conditions, how can one calculate the overall effect on the earths surface?.

anticlimactic says, January 25, 2013 at 3:30 pm: “I see no reason why the exact effect of CO2 doubling could not be measured directly in a lab experiment. It is only sunlight and air so is not a complicated experiment. We can measure temperature changes to a millionth of a degree so any effect could be measured. I doubt if this experiment will be performed as I suspect the answer would be ‘zero’.”
=========================================================

Stupid in, stupid out. Come on researchers!!!! It has even been simplified to just include 4 letters! E N S O. But I know. It sucks doesn’t it. To have to admit that you can’t predict the temperature response unless you can match ENSO and atmospheric teleconnection factors. And then you can only go out maybe 5 years. Gee. That would mean that your next grant would depend on how good your prediction was. That must suck too. So much easier to “stupid in, stupid out” and stand in the gravy train of long term gorrific predictions.

Given the degree to which the Earth sequesters cold in the mountain ice fields and polar regions it has tremendous capacity to self-regulate just with joule for joule cancellation. Add to that a variable cap of sea ice that can shrink to allow heat to escape or grow to retain it, we have a one-two punch for stabilization and stable it has been for eons. We have similar capacity to adapt to changes in the composition of the atmosphere. If CO2 increases every living thing grows in numbers to consume it. The weather warms to increase the zone of life – we know that alpine flowers are increasing their range of altitude because the alarmists tell they are escaping the heat. An odd conclusion, to say the least, but a conclusion that supports their flawed world view. They are moving into opportunity.

It is time we quit worrying over the natural climate variations and start worrying over the unnatural variations of climate nutters.

All this time on this blog Greg, all the remarkably gifted physicists who have taken hours of their time to tutor you…. and not just gifted scientists, but ones who most engineering and physics students would be honored just to have met, let alone be tutored by them, and still you cling to your fallacies.

The explanation of the greenhouse effect you link to is entirely correct except that it has NOTHING to do with the greenhouse effect of CO2. They are two completely different physical effects which unfortunately have acquired the same name. Further, even if that were not true, understanding radiative physics on the scale of the atmospheric column cannot possibly be replicated with cardboard boxes.

anticlimactic, I suggest you search this site for articles by Ira Glickstein or search the web for an experiment by Heinz Hugg on Daly’s site (be sure to read the criticisms that accompany the experiment documentation)

RMB says: January 25, 2013 at 7:42 am
“You can not heat water from above. surface tension blocks the heat very emphatically and very convincingly. Thats why there is no climate sensitivity.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
bones says: January 25, 2013 at 2:21 pm
Baloney. This is the kind of hopelessly wrong stuff that the CAGW sympathisers pray that they will find here.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When RMB says ‘heat’ he is talking about infrared radiation and therefore he is correct.

But when he says that surface tension has anything to do with it, he is not. It is one thing to say that IR is absorbed in a very thin surface layer (which he did not say), quite another to say that surface tension has anything to do with it and even then, it is incorrect to say that none of that heat is conducted downward.

The researchers used a single climate model that repeated calculations millions of times in order to form a basis for statistical analysis. Highly advanced calculations based on Bayesian statistics were carried out by statisticians at the Norwegian Computing Center.

Statistics are meaningless if the future does not replicate the past. And why would it? We have introduced an independent variable. Two distinct trends in the satellite era. Which is a satistical model to choose? Well, at least they didn’t average them.

davidmhoffer says, January 25, 2013 at 7:13 pm:Greg House (to anticlimactic)
An experiment of the kind has already been performed and your suspicion is justified: http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/wood_rw.1909.html
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The explanation of the greenhouse effect you link to is entirely correct except that it has NOTHING to do with the greenhouse effect of CO2. They are two completely different physical effects which unfortunately have acquired the same name.
=========================================================

No, this is not correct.

The experiment by professor Wood dealt exactly with the alleged mechanism of the so called “greenhouse effect” (and debunked it), the IPCC presented 70 years later: back radiation.

The IPCC presented the “greenhouse effect” as warming by back radiation, 70 years after professor Wood demonstrated that this mechanism does not work at all or is negligible. Here is what the IPCC stated: “The Sun powers Earth’s climate, radiating energy at very short wavelengths, predominately in the visible or near-visible (e.g., ultraviolet) part of the spectrum. Roughly one-third of the solar energy that reaches the top of Earth’s atmosphere is reflected directly back to space. The remaining two-thirds is absorbed by the surface and, to a lesser extent, by the atmosphere. To balance the absorbed incoming energy, the Earth must, on average, radiate the same amount of energy back to space. Because the Earth is much colder than the Sun, it radiates at much longer wavelengths, primarily in the infrared part of the spectrum (see Figure 1). Much of this thermal radiation emitted by the land and ocean is absorbed by the atmosphere, including clouds, and reradiated back to Earth. This is called the greenhouse effect.”http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-1-3.html .

Every person is, of course, entitled to invent his/her own private “greenhouse effect” allegedly working differently, but it is the IPCC version which is politically relevant, because certain policies are based exactly on the IPCC reports and not on davidmhoffer’s or other blog users’ versions.

Mosher says…”And sensitivity to 2x c02 cannot be zero. If it were then changes in solar input would be zero.”

Why? How many logical fallacies can you break in one sentance? There are two primary factors in maintaing any system at a steady T. One is the amount of energy going in, The other is the residence time of said energy. Enery itself is immortal. Therefore the bigger the increase in residence time, while input remains constant, the greater the increase in T.

Light a volcano in Iceland for two hundred days and watch most of that energy leave the earth’s surface ocean.land, and atmospheric system fairly quickly. Have that same volcano go off at the bottom of the ocean and almost all the energy released from the mantel is still within the earths system, accumalating every day for the entire period. Hold a match size flame on the side of a pot near the top and you will never much affect the T of the water in the pot; place that same flame under the pot with a raised bottom and watch the T cont to rise. Stating that only the W/M 2 input mattters, is poor science indeed.

Gail, much of your comment and charts showing how deep disparate solar radiation penetrates into the ocean deovetails perfectly with my comments on residence time. BTW, the chart is not correct in that the dyspotic zone of sunlight in the deep tropical oceans is about 800′, So what is the residence time of the different solar spectrum reeaching below the ocean surface?

Nobody said none of the energy is conducted down, just very little. Most goes to evaporation, which increases WV, which decreases radiation reaching the surface by about 30% in a clear sky, let alone when that WV forms clouds, convecting heat up (Thunderstorms) to radiate away, while preventing radiation from reaching the surface, let alone below the surface. So you tell me the net affect of all this. ( I left out dozens of factors) You would be the first as the IPCC can not, the LWarmers can not, the sceptics can not. It is ok to say we do not know, but the observations do not support CAGW theory.

There was a young lady several years ago (16 at the time I think) who wrote an excellent piece on “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” if you will, and why she thought it was cyclical. I used to have it bookmarked but after several computer changes and one stolen, it is gone. I have searched my backups and it just isn’t popping up. From what I recall, she was pretty dead on with what a lot of highly educated and well trained people are now starting to say but she was WAY, WAY ahead of the curve. I wonder if anyone knows what became of her and whether she has been swayed in her opinion. She did an excellent presentation. I see similar presentations here now, but hers was years ago.

If you make your living by producing a climate model and running it on a supercomputer then there is a limit to how far from reality you can let your model get before it starts to look completely ridiculous and your funding is endangered. We’ve now reached that point with a number of these models. We are now seeing new models produced with somewhat less crazy numbers, and older models coming under pressure to adjust their predictions downwards to be less at odds with reality.

But models are still very much a game of “tell me what number you want”. There are so many adjustable parameters assumptions and simplifications in these things that you can make them predict pretty much anything. So although there will be lots of scientific talk about measurements requiring adjusted parameters and newly discovered feedbacks and whatnot to explain all the changes, underneath it all this is still just a bidding game where people pick numbers which are big enough to be alarming so they’ll get funded, but not too big lest people start to laugh.

Henry@Willis
I think to explain the phenomena of why the oceans do not get warmer than 30-33C
When the top layer of molecules of the water in the reservoir reaches a certain temp., namely the boiling point at ruling pressure, it simply evaporates and thereby it cools the remaining liquid in the reservoir. Namely to change state from liquid to gas causes (strong) cooling on the surface that is left. I find the same thing in my swimming pool. Water heated by the sun seldom gets higher than 30-33 but evaporation increases tremendously as we go from, say, 27 to 32….
When water vapor condenses to form clouds and rain, all heat that was taken is put back in the atmosphere. This also helps earth keep the temperature of the planet evenly spread.
Is it not amazing how this planet was put together.

I remember her very well indeed, but cannot recall her name. If it comes back to me, I will post again. As I recall what happened was that there was so much negative publicity that her father persuaded her to cease and desist from what she was doing.

Greg House;
Every person is, of course, entitled to invent his/her own private “greenhouse effect” allegedly working differently, but it is the IPCC version which is politically relevant, because certain policies are based exactly on the IPCC reports and not on davidmhoffer’s or other blog users’ versions.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The IPCC version is correct, The idiocy you linked to has nothing to do with what the IPCC says and the rest of your bloviating is nothing more than sl@yer sh!t reworded which Anthony has thankfully banned. The problem with the IPCC is the magnitude of the direct ghe from co2 and the magnitude and sign of feedbacks. I’ve no interest in discussing further with you, I simply directed readers to articles that deal with the actual physics of the matter rather than letting them be misled by someone who repeatedly demonstrated that the very basics of physics are either beyond his ability to understand or subject to some deliberate attempt to remain ignorant in the face of facts, a trait you sure with the most ardent of warmist alarmists.

“But the findings of the Norwegian project indicate that particulate emissions probably have less of an impact on climate through indirect cooling effects than previously thought.”

Well, the AGW proponents aren’t going to like hearing that. If particulate emissions don’t have the cooling effect that AGW proponents think, they’ll have to look around for another explanation for their models inability to match observations.

“In the Norwegian project, however, researchers have arrived at an estimate of 1.9°C as the most likely level of warming.”

“If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at our current rate, we risk doubling that atmospheric CO2 level in roughly 2050.”

Doesn’t that mean, if CO2 is logrithmic in effect, that we should have already seen roughly 60% of that warming by now (meaning we should be 1.14C warmer now than when the atmosphere contained 280ppm? Is it?

I suspect we will continue the accelerated emission of CO2 courtesy of China and India, the rate of emission won’t remain constant at all.

“I think to explain the phenomena of why the oceans do not get warmer than 30-33C
When the top layer of molecules of the water in the reservoir reaches a certain temp., namely the boiling point at ruling pressure, it simply evaporates and thereby it cools the remaining liquid in the reservoir.”

At the equator surface temperatures are limited by the local wet adiabatic lapse rate to 30C because any excess above that infringes the lapse rate and causes immediate intensification of the thunderstorm belt at the intertropical convergence zone which moves heat to the top of the troposphere and controls surface temperatures in that region.

@ Wayne Delbeke; It was Kristen Byrnes, and her original work was called “Ponder the Maunder”. The website doesn’t seem to be available, but I think you can find excerpts, and some additional writings of hers, in addition to an NPR interview she did in 2008. A very bright young lady. Her interest in climate was only a passing one. She only did Ponder for extra credit, and I don’t believe she expected to find what she did, nor was she expecting the amount of attention she got from it.

Observe how the global warming alarmists, scientists and politicians alike, are gradually preparing their exit routes, after decades of false scaremongering and fraudulent misappropriation of scarce global resources on a fabricated, non-existent crisis.

Climate sensitivity estimates are being reduced, but the warmists still allege that there is cause for alarm and the need for climate action. This downward trend will continue until a climate sensitivity of much less than one degree C is the new consensus.

Then someone will point out that there is no global warming crisis, which some of us wrote confidently a decade ago!
___________

Mr. A. Right said
“I probably won’t live long enough to see this particular hysteria replaced by the next “peril”.

Sir, first let me wish you a long and happy life.

Next, let me assure you that global warming hysteria will not last much longer. It will die of exposure and hypothermia, caused by global cooling.

The common sense of the common man will see through the fraud of alleged global warming long before many of the self-appointed “intelligentsia” do so.

Imbecile politicians all over the cooling world will be forced to follow. They will be humiliated to realize that they were fooled, and by inference, are fools.

Perpetuators of this fraud will be exposed and some could even face prosecution. That is why we are now seeing the reversal in academic circles mentioned in George Wills’ above article.

Global warming alarmists are now trying to prepare a “soft exit” for themselves. Tactically, they are straddling the political fence, saying there will be no global warming for several decades, possibly even some cooling, but dangerous global warming will surely return.

But people will simply not buy into the fraud of catastrophic global warming much longer, and more and more warmists will abandon ship as the ice closes in.

The tragedy is that, in the meantime, trillions of dollars will be wasted on the fraud of global warming, funds that should have been dedicated to real and pressing human needs, instead of being squandered on imaginary fears.

A further concern is that we may be totally unprepared for global cooling, should it be severe.

Humanity survives and thrives much better in warm periods than in cold ones. During the Maunder Minimum about 1700, some Northern countries lost one-third of their populations.

davidmhoffer says, January 26, 2013 at 5:10 am: “The IPCC version is correct, The idiocy you linked to has nothing to do with what the IPCC says”
========================================================

What you call “idiocy” is the IPCC explanation of the so called greenhouse effect. It starts like that:

“Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis

FAQ 1.3 What is the Greenhouse Effect?

Frequently Asked Question 1.3 What is the Greenhouse Effect?”

And then the text follows I quoted in my previous comment.

I do not like the word “idiocy”, but the IPCC version is like 160 years old and was debunked 100 years ago, see my previous comment.

Pochas said
At the equator surface temperatures are limited by the local wet adiabatic lapse rate to 30C because any excess above that infringes the lapse rate and causes immediate intensification of the thunderstorm belt at the intertropical convergence zone which moves heat to the top of the troposphere and controls surface temperatures in that region.

Henry says
I think you explain the result, not the process of what is exactly happening – in a way that most people can understand it. Did you ever have some low boiling fluid like freon on your hand/armpits and did you notice how much energy it extracts (how cold your hand/arm pit becomes) as the fluid evaporates? You can actually get cold burn, if you are not careful.
The sun’s UV rays is what heats the oceans, mostly, due to the absorbency of water in the UV region. This means that most of those particular UV rays coming in will be converted to heat. Once this heat in the top layer of the molecules reaches boiling point, at the ruling pressure, you get evaporation and that extracts energy from the layer of molecules lying below. That is why you will never get the water above 32 or 33C (from the sun’s rays).
I hope Willis will also still respond to my previous post on this.

Henry@Allan MacRae
Good post. It shows vision.
The results of my investigations into this lead me to believe that by 2038 or 2039 we will be back to where we were in 1951. I don’t think things will become cooler than that. http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/01/24/our-earth-is-cooling/
So I am not too worried. Are you still worried that things might become worse than 1951?

Greg House;
I do not like the word “idiocy”, but the IPCC version is like 160 years old and was debunked 100 years ago, see my previous comment.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

And you remain stuck with the physics of 100 years ago as if nothing has happened between then and now. You read up until the point you see something that you think agrees with your world view, then you stop. All attempts by a long list of rather well qualified scientists from both sides of the debate to point out to you that there has been a century of physics since then have been futile.

davidmhoffer says, January 26, 2013 at 8:42 am: “All attempts by a long list of rather well qualified scientists from both sides of the debate to point out to you that there has been a century of physics since then have been futile.”
====================================================
There has been 33 years of unscientific climate scam.

You can not heat water from above. surface tension blocks the heat very emphatically and very convincingly. Thats why there is no climate sensitivity.”
Yes water can heat from above. Ever swum in a small river after a few hot summer days? The top 2 feet is warm but it drops a few degrees at about 2 meters down. Or how about a shallow pond or the kiddies swimming pool at a swim center.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When you are talking shallow water do not forget sunlight penetrates and interacts with what ever is forms the bottom of the pond and then you get heating via conduction.

I would just like to comment on your post. Water of course accepts radiation and if you have clear days your river will naturally heat quicker than on cloudy days
I carried out two experiments to arrive at my conclusions. First I fired a heat gun at the surface of water in a bucket. A heat gun operates at about 450degs C. At that temp I expected to see steam rise almost immediately. After 5mins, no steam so I stopped and checked the water, result, water STONE cold including the surface where I had been applying the heat. The second experiment was to compare the uptake of heat in two almost identical basins. Basin 1, water completely uncovered, basin 2, same as basin 1 except that there is ablack baking dish floating on the surface to kill the surface tension. Heat applied to the basins fot 15mins each in turn. The result I got was an increase in temp in basin 1 of 6degsF and in basin 2 the increase in temp was 48degsF. It needs to be noted that the increase in temp in basin1. is probably due to the fact that the heat being applied is fan forced and simulates weight thereby makin the surface tension drop its guard. The difference in rate of heat uptake convinces me. RGDS

But when he says that surface tension has anything to do with it, he is not. It is one thing to say that IR is absorbed in a very thin surface layer (which he did not say), quite another to say that surface tension has anything to do with it and even then, it is incorrect to say that none of that heat is conducted downward.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
He explained what he meant by that statement a while back but I am not going to go look for it.

“… it is incorrect to say that none of that heat is conducted downward….”
Actually it is correct to say the heat is not being conducted downward and instead is dissipated through evaporation.

All you have to do is look at the graphs to see CO2 back radiation is a minor bit player when talking about the ocean.

graph 1 The sunlight penetrating the ocean to 10 meters below the surface is roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of the energy that arrived at the surface of the earth from the sun.

Now look at the next graph.graph 2“99% of sun’s radiation fall between 0.2 – 5.6um; 80% – 0.4 – 1.5um” and those wavelengths have an energy peaking at 10^9 times as much energy at the visible wavelengths compared to the peak energy of the infrared wavelengths emitted by the earth.

Now look at the actual wavelengths that interact with CO2graph 3
The most important vibrational and rotational transitions for CO2 is
Center……Band interval
667…………..540-800

Greg House;
There has been 33 years of unscientific climate scam.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Oh well, that excuses you does it? They think that 2+2=5 so it is OK for you to argue that 2+2=3? Them being wrong makes you right?

If you want to be of any value in this debate then learn the physics and argue from fact. If all you do is continue your nonsense then you do great harm because you become one of the useful idiots whose comments get mocked by those who seek to discredit skeptics and use stupidity like yours as an example. When physicists from completely different sides of the debate all tell you that you are wrong, and for the exact same reasons, perhaps it might be logical for you to start learning from them and focusing on the areas in which they disagree instead of making a fool of yourself on the areas in which they agree.

Gail, much of your comment and charts….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You might be interested in this paper I found via the same blog:

Using the oceans as a calorimeter to quantify the solar radiative forcing
Nir J. Shaviv

Over the 11-year solar cycle, small changes in the total solar irradiance (TSI) give rise to small variations in the global energy budget. It was suggested, however, that different mechanisms could amplify solar activity variations to give large climatic effects, a possibility which is still a subject of debate. With this in mind, we use the oceans as a calorimeter to measure the radiative forcing variations associated with the solar cycle. This is achieved through the study of three independent records, the net heat flux into the oceans over 5 decades, the sea-level change rate based on tide gauge records over the 20th century, and the sea-surface temperature variations. Each of the records can be used to consistently derive the same oceanic heat flux. We find that the total radiative forcing associated with solar cycles variations is about 5 to 7 times larger than just those associated with the TSI variations, thus implying the necessary existence of an amplification mechanism, although without pointing to which one…..http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167.1959&rep=rep1&type=pdf

(Leif Svalgaard isn’t going to be happy with that information)

Shaviv has one chart in his paper that show “Maximum annual depth (in meters) of the mixed layer based on the ocean temperature data set of Levitus and Boyer.” It varies from 25 meters to ~ 500 meters. The tropics having the shallowest depth and increasing to the poles with the deepest, no doubt due to all the stuff growing in the ocean as you get closer to the equator.

davidmhoffer says, January 26, 2013 at 11:01 am : “They think that 2+2=5 so it is OK for you to argue that 2+2=3? Them being wrong makes you right?”
=======================================================
Of course, it makes me right about them being wrong, it is obvious.

The whole IPCC thing is based on something that had been proven wrong 70 years before they came up with that climate scam.

Their “CO2 warming by back radiation” is a fiction, because, again, it was proven that back radiation does not warm (or slows down cooling, whatever) at all or does to a negligible extent.

Note, again: it was proven scientifically, physically, by a real physical experiment.

If the Atlantic water flow rate is increased, assuming a constant rate of cooling, it will enter the Arctic Ocean at a warmer temperature than if the flow rate is slower.

Waters at this depth cannot be warmed directly by the sun or greenhouse effect as solar radiation penetrates only to 100 metres depth, while infra-red radiation from the greenhouse effect can only warm the immediate surface `skin’ of the ocean. chart in fig.17
The Sverdrup radiation chart in fig.17 shows that solar radiation at visible wavelengths can penetrate the ocean readily, heating it directly at depths down to 100 metres. However, it also shows that as the radiation moves into the infra-red, the ability of the deeper ocean to absorb heat rapidly diminishes. Once we move into the far infra red where radiation from the greenhouse effect occurs, only the immediate surface `skin’ of the ocean can absorb that radiation. For that energy to be absorbed down to deeper depths requires the assistance of surface turbulence to mix in the heat. If the ocean surface is not turbulent (as frequently happens in the tropics – the so-called `Doldrums’), energy collected from the greenhouse effect can only warm the top millimetre of the ocean, most of the heat being promptly lost again through evaporation.

So that is where he got the ‘skin’ surface tension from, Dr. John L. Daly.

“I see no reason why the exact effect of CO2 doubling could not be measured directly in a lab experiment. It is only sunlight and air so is not a complicated experiment. We can measure temperature changes to a millionth of a degree so any effect could be measured.

I doubt if this experiment will be performed as I suspect the answer would be ‘zero’.
##############

its pretty simple. Because we have GHGs ( including water vapor) in the atmosphere the earth does not radiate directly from the surface to space. the earth radiates at an altitude known as the ERL.. or effective radiating level. When you add GHGs to the atmosphere ( like doubling c02) you raise this level. The earth is then radiating from a higher colder location. That means it losses energy less rapidly. Like your coffee in a thermos. the silver lining minimizes the loss of energy via radition so the coffee cools less rapidly. The return of radiation to the coffee doesnt warm it. back radiation doesnt warm the surface, the increase in opacity slows the rate of cooling.
You cant measure this in a woods experiment or in the lab because you cant recreate the atmosphere, the stratosphere, and the ERL. The effect of adding C02 is to increase the altitude for the ERL. This means a slow down in the rate of cooling . people refer to that as warming.. less cool than it would be otherwise.

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.
———–
This is all very odd.

1. Somehow we have climate sensitivity values that vary depending on which decade. I thought climate sensitivity is more or less constant.

2. They are saying that temperatures can only rise by a few degrees more, when a few days ago from the Greenland results we saw higher temperatures than this during the Eemian.

3. Other studies show a wide range of climate sensitivities. Some of the pre-now studies, including paleo, suggest high CS and contradict the idea that some mistake has been made due to recent high rates of temperature rise.

Steven Mosher says, January 26, 2013 at 4:31 pm: “Because we have GHGs ( including water vapor) in the atmosphere the earth does not radiate directly from the surface to space. the earth radiates at an altitude known as the ERL.. or effective radiating level. When you add GHGs to the atmosphere ( like doubling c02) you raise this level. The earth is then radiating from a higher colder location. That means it losses energy less rapidly. …back radiation doesnt warm the surface, the increase in opacity slows the rate of cooling. … people refer to that as warming.. less cool than it would be otherwise”
==========================================================

This part is not the politically relevant version of the IPCC “greenhouse effect”, but I find it interesting nevertheless, because it is absurd.

The trick, or let us say in a neutral way, the mistake in your version, Steven, is that you confuse the surface and atmosphere and ambiguously use the word “Earth”. Let me remind you that the “(anthropogenic) global warming” is about close to the surface air temperature per definition.

In reality the surface is warmed by the sunlight and cooled 1.by air (conduction+convection) and 2.radiation. (Of course, air is constantly moving and warm air can warm colder surface, but let us put it aside).

Now, what is going on with the radiation after it leaves the surface is completely irrelevant to the surface temperature, unless some part of this lost radiation returns back to the surface and affects the surface’s temperature (back radiation), and that in turn affects the near the surface air temperature by conduction+convection. This is a crucial point, please, make an effort. Your “radiating from a higher colder location” meaning atmosphere is as such irrelevant.

Let me give you a simple example. If you lose 10 dollars then it is irrelevant who finds it and on which location he spends it etc, because it does not change your financial situation. It would, however, if some of this money returned to your pocket.

If back radiation is not capable for whatever reason to affect the temperature of the source (the Earth’s surface), then it absolutely does not matter what sort of adventures the primary surface radiation experiences on it’s way to the space. It is lost, gone. And the Wood experiment demonstrates that back radiation has no effect on temperature of the source or only negligible one. So the “greenhouse effect” as presented by the IPCC has no basis in science, and your small addition has no basis in science either.

You guys do not have a case against CO2.

The only way, however, CO2 might affect air temperature could be by getting warmed directly by radiation, like many other things around us, but it is not the IPCC version and second, such an effect can only be negligible (I can go into details on that, if needed).

Steven Mosher says, January 26, 2013 at 4:31 pm: “Like your coffee in a thermos. the silver lining minimizes the loss of energy via radition so the coffee cools less rapidly. The return of radiation to the coffee doesnt warm it. back radiation doesnt warm the surface, the increase in opacity slows the rate of cooling.”
=========================================================

I am afraid it is vacuum in a thermos that slows the rate of cooling.

Of course, if manufacturers believe that a reflective coating works they reasonably apply it in their products, and the reason they believe it might be that they read about it somewhere. Unfortunately such an effect is exactly of the kind the Wood experiment dealt with, and the result is known, so apparently the reflective coating in a thermos has no or only negligible effect and is worthless.

Heat is lost from the hot coffee (or tea for ya’ll across the pond) by conduction convection, and radiation to a cooler body.

So they isolate the coffee from the walls and floor of the thermos, and try to isolate the coffee with an insulating material (often a simple ring of soft plastic to keep the thermos from leaking in wash water or spilled coffee), and suspend the hot well of coffee from the top so conduction is minimized.

Then they minimize convection by placing the inner well inside an outer glass well, pump out the air between, and seal the glass.

Then they minimize radiation losses to the wall with that reflective coating on the walls. But notice that the reflective coating tends to work “right at the surface” by reflecting energy from the mass behind the coating back into the mass. They don’t want a “black body” (or even a grey body) surface. They want a surface that doesn’t radiate at all – if they could get it. Second order effects of the reflective surface on the outer wall are helpful: radiation from the hot outside of the coffee-filled wall surface strikes the inside of the reflective outside wall. There, part of that energy is reflected back from the inside of the cold outer wall back towards the outside of the hot (coffee) side.

RACookPE1978 says, January 26, 2013 at 6:59 pm: “Then they minimize radiation losses to the wall with that reflective coating on the walls. …”
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I perfectly understand the idea behind the reflective coating in a thermos, and it is not different from the idea about “greenhouse gases” reducing radiation losses etc., but the problem is that this idea is apparently wrong.

As I said, coffee/surface radiate thus getting colder. Then the radiation meets the reflective coating/”greenhouse gases” and is sent back, wonderful. Now it is back radiation. The question is: does it affect the temperature of the source? The answer given by the Wood experiment (1909) is “no” (or negligible).

greg house;
The question is: does it affect the temperature of the source? The answer given by the Wood experiment (1909) is “no” (or negligible).
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of engineers design everything from blankets to nuclear reactors using the precise physics that greg house insists are impossible. Yet the things they build work as designed. Odd that, Must be some kind of effing fluke that happens over and over again where thousands of other factors accidentally cancel out the errors in the design so that they work precisely as designed despite the impossible physics. These thousands of errors per product times millions of products means that greg house is right but the engineers made trillions upon trillions of mistakes that all cancel out the bad physics.

It can’t be said too often that climate models are merely contrivances meant to project a future warming trend indefinitely. They can do no else. There is nothing that verifies their product and in fact all observations refute the GCM’s. Those who contrive the models claim that the product of the models validates them, and obtusely cling to this circular argument. Well, the world is slowly catching on to the fact that these GCM’s are part hoax.

In fact the ERL is reached by convection and convection is due to GHG. But worse than that, the earth’s surface is 71% water, and this cools by evaporation and so latent heat convected aloft is the principle means of cooling the surface. You adhere to a simplistic view of atmospheric processes that ignores the primary effects of water.

In fact, water in all of its phases, whether ice, liquid, or vapor, moderates temperature. Compare tropics with the Sahara. AGW theory ignores this principle. That is why the GCM’s fail abysmally.
But the global warmers ignore the abysmal failures and proceed bau.

“Every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of engineers design everything from blankets to nuclear reactors using the precise physics that greg house insists are impossible. ”

If I understand Greg House correctly, he is saying that the back radiation cannot make the surface (or coffee) warmer than it started.

I think Greg is probably then extrapolating this idea, to arrive at the belief that back radiation can’t cause the surface temperature of the Earth to increase. Yet he has ignored the fact that energy from the sun is constantly being added to the system which does indeed make the Earth radiate at a higher temperature. That is why simple experiments with glass tubes cannot mimic what is happening in the Earths climate and analogies with thermos flasks do more to muddy the waters than to clarify.

I am aware of Woods’ experiment showing the ‘greenhouse effect’ is negligible, but so are warmist sites like Wikipedia – they also acknowledge this experiment and accept it – for greenhouses!

Looking at Global Warming however and you see the greenhouse glass is replaced by tropospheric heating, and the reflected infrared is now ‘back radiation’. No mention of greenhouses whatsoever so Woods’ findings do not apply!!! This is why the experiment must be specifically about CO2 to determine if it has any effect.

In a similar manner to Woods I would see it consisting of two tubes, as long as possible, insulated at the sides and base to prevent ambient heating, and sealed at the top with rock crystal. Sensitive thermocouples would be attached to the base and along the length. They should be put on equatorial mounts so they can follow the sun.

The basic experiment would be to double the CO2 in one of the tubes and check for temperature changes, over a 24 hour period. Variations would be : adding a fan to circulate the air, adding dry soil, adding water to the soil, and, just for fun, replicating the atmosphere of Venus.

I suspect the CO2 sensitivity would actually be zero as I see no possible mechanism for it to have any effect on the atmosphere. It would be interesting to find out.

This is all very odd.
That would be cognitive dissonance kicking in. The very foundations of the CAGW conjecture on the one hand are being threatened by reality, and actual science on the other. If it were me, I’d go with the latter. Healthier emotionally and psychologically.

I see no reason why the exact effect of CO2 doubling could not be measured directly in a lab experiment. It is only sunlight and air so is not a complicated experiment.

Also convection, which is a major, major player in the open atmosphere. It transports a huge amount of surface heat skyward to heights where CO2 can radiate it effectively. It can also be responsible for transporting water vapor and creating cloudiness that increases the Earth’s albedo which reduces the net solar energy absorption.

These effects cannot be readily reproduced in a small scale lab experiment.

The really, really amusing thing about this is the enormous impact that a tiny timespan has had on the estimate (which is absolutely on the right track). And that timespan is not “finished”. Every year with basically neutral temperature at this point shaves another 0.1 C off of the overall expected sensitivity, at least down to the 1-1.4C expected from CO_2 only, at least 0.3 to 0.4 of which we’ve already experienced as CO_2 went from 300 to 400 ppm.

Indeed, that’s the pace — 1.2 C total warming by the time CO_2 gets to 600 ppm. Maybe. But we really have only a tiny segment of good, tamper-proof data (RSS or UAH, take your pick). If they remain flat for another decade, or go down, that will completely alter the predictions. If they go up, or sharply up, that will completely alter the predictions.

The study ended with 2010, which was a hot year. Let’s someone ask them to include the data for the last two years, which were cooler, and ask how much those lower numbers and that additional “flat” time lowers their sensitivity number.

Mosher says: “the earth radiates at an altitude known as the ERL.. or effective radiating level. When you add GHGs to the atmosphere ( like doubling c02) you raise this level.”

Why stop there, Steve? You only described the “warming effect” of CO2. For some reason you and others who “believe” forget the other half of the equation. You only deal with surface energy but what happens to the energy in the atmosphere? GHGs are the gases that radiate energy to space. In other words, they cool the atmosphere. When you add more of them guess what happens?

Since CO2 is the primary GHG in the upper atmosphere (WV condenses out) adding more of this gas leads to increases in outgoing radiation. Since this cools the upper atmosphere it lowers the ERL and counters the GHE. That’s right, a negative feedback for CO2 warming (its small part of the GHE) is provided by CO2 itself. This effect is the reason there is no hot-spot. The extra energy trapped by CO2 at low levels in the atmosphere is radiated away by the CO2 at higher levels.

davidmhoffer says, January 26, 2013 at 10:39 pm : “Every day, all over the world, tens of thousands of engineers design everything from blankets to nuclear reactors using the precise physics that greg house insists are impossible.
========================================================

The really, really amusing thing about this is the enormous impact that a tiny timespan has had on the estimate (which is absolutely on the right track). And that timespan is not “finished”. Every year with basically neutral temperature at this point shaves another 0.1 C off of the overall expected sensitivity,

anticlimactic says, January 27, 2013 at 7:21 am: “Looking at Global Warming however and you see the greenhouse glass is replaced by tropospheric heating, and the reflected infrared is now ‘back radiation’. No mention of greenhouses whatsoever so Woods’ findings do not apply!!!”
===========================================================

Wood’s finding is this: “back radiation does not affect the temperature of the source”.

Hence it applies to everything where there is back radiation. It applies to glass, gases, reflective coatings and so on.

Be sure to also read through the zip file with reactions to the experiment that you will find at the top of the page.

1. The experiment shows conclusively that sensitivity in fact is not zero.
2. The conclusions drawn by Hug in regard to sensitivity in the atmospheric air column as a whole are invalid. The reasons for these are examined in detail in the zip file. In brief:
3. Hug’s experiment was conducted in an artificial atmosphere with a uniform water vapour. In the earth’s atmosphere, water vapour may range from 40,000 ppm at sea surface to nearly zero at high altitudes/cold temperatures. As the absorption spectra of water vapour and CO2 overlap, Hug’s experiment fails to take into account the fact that CO2’s effects would be more pronounced at higher altitudes and lower temperatures, hence his number is far too low.
4. Hug’s experiment also fails to consider the sheer scale of the atmospheric air column. Whatever contribution to warming that CO2 made over the 10 cm glass tube used in his experiment, it gets to make it again in the next 10 cm….and the next…and the next…. all the way to the top of the atmosphere several kilometers up.

All that said, we can draw the conclusion that the theoretical effects of CO2 do in fact exist, they have been measured over a 10 cm path length, and from this we can extrapolate that a still higher sensitivity would be arrived at once the entire atmospheric scale and the change in water vapour concentration from bottom to top of that scale is taken into account. Since building such an apparatus is not within our current technical capabilities, we cannot via experiment (at least this type of experiment) determine exactly what the sensitivity actually is across the atmospheric air column. Nor does such an experiment allow us to take into account secondary (feedback) effects which evidence is increasingly showing may well be negative. This is also important because it is the net effect that is of interest to us, not the effect of CO2 in isolation.

As for Greg House, as you correctly pointed out, the Woods experiment has nothing to do with the effects of CO2. Greg House knows this as it has been explained to him in multiple threads by multiple people. He knows also that he is referencing a century old experiment, and that there has been much discovered in physics since then, and multiple people have gone into great detail explaining this to him as well. He knows also about the Heinz Hug experiment, because I’ve directed him to it several times. He’s also had suggested to him by various luminaries such as Robert Brown at Duke, Leif Svalgaard, Ira Glickstein and others various experiments that he could conduct himself. Multiple people have pointed out to him that the mere fact that Venus is warmer than Mercury despite being farther from the sun, and that Earth is warmer than the moon, despite being the same distance from the sun, show conclusively that atmospheres do in fact result in warmer surface temperatures via the greenhouse effect. It has been pointed out to him that cloudy nights are warmer than clear sky nights, despite the clouds being much, much colder than the surface below them, yet they make it warmer. He’s been pointed at text books, free ones that are in use in universities where the laws of physics are explained in detail, the formulas and their application are easily understood, and which have been verified by experiment countless times. Yet through all this, Greg House steadfastly clings to a world view that ignores this entire body of evidence and seems to be based on a single experiment that is a century old and has nothing to do with the topic at hand in the first place.

The willful ignorance is instructive, for there simply is no difference between the ignorance that Greg House imposes on himself (and attempts to impose on others) and the willful ignorance of alarmists who similarly see the results they want to see simply by ignoring all the contrary data and science and attempting to impose their ignorance upon others.

davidmhoffer says
All that said, we can draw the conclusion that the theoretical effects of CO2 do in fact exist, they have been measured over a 10 cm path length, and from this we can extrapolate that a still higher sensitivity would be arrived at once the entire atmospheric scale and the change in water vapour concentration from bottom to top of that scale is taken into account

henry says
with all due respect, I say that nobody has conclusively proven, to me, at least, that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling. I have explained my position on this here,

For example, until fairly recently, it was not even known that CO2 also has absorptions in the UV region, which is how we now can identify it, qualitatively at least, on other planets, due to its back radiation…(=cooling)

So, unless you can provide me with the balance sheet, taking into account all the factors that I mention in my dissertation, WE don’t know if the net effect of more CO2 in the atmosphere is that of warming, cooling, or simply (close to) zero.

Failing you or anyone bringing me such relevant test results, on a balance sheet, showing me exactly how much warming and how much cooling the increase in CO2 causes, common sense would tell me that 50-100 ppm of a change in concentration of any one particular gas in the atmosphere, especially one on which all of our life and food (and drinks) depends, cannot make much of any difference whatsoever.

HenryP;
henry says
with all due respect, I say that nobody has conclusively proven, to me, at least, that the net effect of more CO2 is that of warming rather than cooling.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

With all “due respect”, I said nothing about the experiments and evidence I presented being of value in quantifying the net effect of CO2. In fact I went to considerable lengths to point out that the experiment I was discussing did NOT have the capability to quantify net effects. If you are going to offer me my “due respect” then have the decency to read what I said.

Nor does such an experiment allow us to take into account secondary (feedback) effects which evidence is increasingly showing may well be negative. This is also important because it is the net effect that is of interest to us, not the effect of CO2 in isolation.

Yes it is simple. The higher the temperature at the Earth’s surface, the higher the radiative layer. Warm air is less dense so to maintain atmospheric pressure of about 1 atmosphere at the surface the column of air above a warm area must be higher than a cool area as it has less mass.

The mention of a vacuum flask brings up another area. You mention the silvering of a coffee flask preventing heat loss by radiation, but the key preventer of heat loss is the vacuum which slows cooling by conduction and convection. At normal Earth temperatures heat loss is mostly by conduction and convection, radiation only dominates at much higher temperatures. In fact nowadays coffee flasks rarely have a silvered lining as the glass is replaced by stainless steel which is a poor conductor – another indication of how little radiation matters at these temperatures.

The atmosphere is warmed primarily by conduction and convection at the Earth’s surface, not by radiation – standard school physics. Air warmed by the Earth must transmit it’s heat to cooler air or be forced to rise. If it fails to lose its heat it will rise to the radiative layer where it will eventually cool and fall back to earth. Warm air rises until it cools!

I am surprised at you stating that GHGs only have an effect at the radiative layer. I thought the idea was that the effect was throughout the atmosphere. This is my assumption based on your implication that my suggestion of an experiment would not be a meaningful test.

You say the atmosphere can not be recreated in the lab. Possibly not, but elements of it can. For example a tank containing CO2 at the density and temperature found at the radiative layer. How much radiation is absorbed, how much ‘back radiation’ is there, how long will a CO2 molecule hold the heat until it is radiated.

There are also indirect methods. Consider the Sahara Desert where temperature falls of 30C in a day are common. The radiative layer seems to have no problems disposing of the heat, and it poses serious questions about ‘back radiation’!. It also means that, at best, if there is any heating of the atmosphere by GHGs the effect would disappear within minutes of the sun setting. If GHGs had the effect you suggest then the days might be slightly warmer but the night temperatures would stay constant. Also it could not be additive, the effect would only be that achieved within any single day.

Finally, you mention water vapour as a GHG…but water vapour is the main cooling component in the atmosphere, transporting heat from the surface to the radiative layer, so not really a true GHG. I think that water, in all its forms, is the only substance on Earth which can have any real effect on climate, but mostly as a moderator. Every other influence is extra-terrestrial, mainly solar.

davidmhoffer says
Nor does such an experiment allow us to take into account secondary (feedback) effects which evidence is increasingly showing may well be negative. This is also important because it is the net effect that is of interest to us, not the effect of CO2 in isolation

henry says
I thought I had read the whole post earlier, and, in hindsight, stopped at the wrong point the 2nd time when I decided to comment on it. My apologies to you, david.

davidmhoffer says, January 27, 2013 at 10:30 am: “As for Greg House … He knows also about the Heinz Hug experiment, because I’ve directed him to it several times.”
============================================================

Of course, I know that, and you, I guess, know what I answered you: that that experiment was completely irrelevant to the issue in question, namely of the alleged effect of back radiation on the temperature of the source.

Greg House;
Of course, I know that, and you, I guess, know what I answered you: that that experiment was completely irrelevant to the issue in question, namely of the alleged effect of back radiation on the temperature of the source.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Demonstrating once again your profound and disturbing inability to understand either the physics I have presented or the physics you have presented. If you actually had the first effing clue as to what radiative physics actually is you’d understand why the Hug experiment is precisely the proof you request, but you would rather remain ignorant.

HenryP;
No worries. Dealing with people who have questions that I can help answer is a bit of a hobby for my. Dealing with those like House who cling to their ignorance and put it on display for all to see makes me ill tempered. Sorry if I was short with you.

anticlimactic;In fact nowadays coffee flasks rarely have a silvered lining as the glass is replaced by stainless steel which is a poor conductor – another indication of how little radiation matters at these temperatures.

Stainless steel is an excellent conductor. You are also confusing conductance and radiance.

Warm air rises until it cools!

Warm air cools and rises at the same time. Now you are confusing convection with radiance. Both processes occur at the same time.

I am surprised at you stating that GHGs only have an effect at the radiative layer. I thought the idea was that the effect was throughout the atmosphere.

It is.

This is my assumption based on your implication that my suggestion of an experiment would not be a meaningful test.

Read the zip file from the Hug experiment like I suggested.

You say the atmosphere can not be recreated in the lab. Possibly not, but elements of it can. For example a tank containing CO2 at the density and temperature found at the radiative layer. How much radiation is absorbed, how much ‘back radiation’ is there, how long will a CO2 molecule hold the heat until it is radiated.

Once again, read the zip file as suggested.

There are also indirect methods. Consider the Sahara Desert where temperature falls of 30C in a day are common. The radiative layer seems to have no problems disposing of the heat, and it poses serious questions about ‘back radiation’!

No, it proves back radiation. Water vapour is by far the dominant greenhouse gas but is almost entirely absent in a desert. That is why deserts cool so fast when the sun goes down. Areas with high water vapour content at the exact same latitude don’t cool off nearly as much which is evidence of the very back radiation you are trying to refute.

It also means that, at best, if there is any heating of the atmosphere by GHGs the effect would disappear within minutes of the sun setting. If GHGs had the effect you suggest then the days might be slightly warmer but the night temperatures would stay constant. Also it could not be additive, the effect would only be that achieved within any single day.

In the day time, heating processes dominate, in other words insolation. At night, cooling processes dominate. The fact that dry areas cool fast at night and humid areas cool slowly is de facto evidence of GHG effect of water vapour. You have the meaning exactly reversed.

Finally, you mention water vapour as a GHG…but water vapour is the main cooling component in the atmosphere, transporting heat from the surface to the radiative layer, so not really a true GHG.

Water vapour is like anything else, the effects vary depending upon circumstance. You cannot make a blanket statement about water vapour any more than you can about clouds. For example, clouds in day time have a net cooling effect but at night time they have a net warming effect.

“its pretty simple. Because we have GHGs ( including water vapor) in the atmosphere the earth does not radiate directly from the surface to space. the earth radiates at an altitude known as the ERL.. or effective radiating level. When you add GHGs to the atmosphere ( like doubling c02) you raise this level. The earth is then radiating from a higher colder location.”

Not that simple, Steven. Only the CO2 bands radiate from the higher colder location. The rest of the atmosphere, which is the vast majority of it, radiates from the same lower, warmer locations as before. The effect of more CO2 is an insignificant increase in the radiation emitted from the coldest, lowest radiance layer of the atmosphere, ‘too tiny to matter.’ You should take everything the IPCC says with a grain of salt. They are rent-seekers, not scientists.

In the decade from 2021 to 2030, I say average global temperatures will be:
1. Much warmer than the past decade (similar to IPCC projections)? 0% probability of occurrence
2. About the same as the past decade? 20%
3. Moderately cooler than the past decade? 40%
4. Much cooler than the past decade (similar to ~~1800 temperatures, during the Dalton Minimum) ? 25%
5. Much much cooler than the past decade (similar ~~1700 temperatures, during to the Maunder Minimum) ? 15%

In summary, I say it is going to get cooler, with a significant probability that it will be cold enough to negatively affect the grain harvest.

I think you explain the result, not the process of what is exactly happening – in a way that most people can understand it.

pochas:
You’re probably right.

HenryP:
“The sun’s UV rays is what heats the oceans, mostly, due to the absorbency of water in the UV region. ”

pochas:
The particulates suspended in the water absorb everything the water molecules don’t. It all happens within 300 meters of the surface. Now getting the heat back to the surface so it can be radiated as infrared requires convection. A diver sees a gradual decrease in temperature as he descends through the convective zone, and then a more abrupt decline in temperatures below it.

On air-water contact: Take dry air such as the air descending in the desert regions north and south of the equator and contact it with water. Some water evaporates, it doesn’t have to be hot water. The driving force is the difference between the vapor pressure of water at the interface temperature and the vapor pressure of water in the air. The effect is to cool both the water and the air because both supply the latent heat of evaporation. This principle is behind the operation of the cooling towers and spray ponds you see associated with large air conditioning systems. And as you say it is how heat and humidity is picked up by the air mass as it heads for the thunderstorm region. Technically its called “adiabatic humidification.” But the temperature is actually controlled by the lapse rate because any infringement on the lapse rate causes the updrafts in the thunderstorm region to increase and immediately remove the excess heat by increasing the overturning circulation in the equatorial troposphere.

On the subject of vision, you might find the following (excerpt from my website) of interest.

Canada now has the strongest economy in the developed world, due primarily to the success of the Canadian oilsands. We are now facing significant challenges, due to our recent failures of vision, but I am hopeful that we will recover.

There were three primary factors that revitalized the Canadian oilsands industry:
– New Tax terms, which I co-initiated in 1985;
– New Royalty Terms, which I initiated in 1988;
– SAGD recovery of in-situ oilsands, which was initiated by others.

I see similar energy-based opportunities that would allow the USA to revitalize its economy. The very low cost of natural gas, now about one-fifth the cost of crude oil on an energy-equivalent basis, provides North America with a low-cost energy competitive advantage to rebuild our manufacturing industries.

It would be highly beneficial, in my opinion, to reverse the destructive decline of the American middle class. America has become too divided between the “haves” and the “have-nots”. It was the solid middle class, and solid middle-class values, that made America great. It can become so again.

It is significant that, more than twenty years later:
– all but one of these strategic recommendations have been successfully implemented, and
– Canada is now the 6th largest oil producer in the world, and the largest foreign supplier of oil to the USA.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The conventional oil industry in Alberta is now entering a period of decline in terms of volumes, revenues and profits. It has served as the primary “engine” of provincial economic growth and stability for the last 40 years. …. In each of these cases major economic and social benefits including jobs, energy self-sufficiency and markets for industrial products have been created by these strategic industries. As the conventional oil industry declines in Alberta, it will be necessary to find a suitable replacement. I believe it is entirely appropriate for the oilsands industry to fill this role.
…

We are at a critical point in the oilsands industry. Our future could consist of, on the one hand, two struggling plants, Syncrude and Suncor and little else, or alternatively, a thriving series of plants and major expansions eventually producing over half of Canada’s crude oil supply and serving as Alberta’s primary engine of economic growth and stability.
…

[Endorsement of the need for new Crown Royalty and Corporate Tax terms, as I proposed at the December 1988 Management Committee meeting, where we formed the Fiscal Terms Task Force. I successfully proposed new Tax Terms (Class 28, later to become Class 41) for a major Syncrude expansion in March 1985.]

“its pretty simple. Because we have GHGs ( including water vapor) in the atmosphere the earth does not radiate directly from the surface to space. the earth radiates at an altitude known as the ERL.. or effective radiating level. When you add GHGs to the atmosphere ( like doubling c02) you raise this level. The earth is then radiating from a higher colder location.”

Not that simple, Steven. Only the CO2 bands radiate from the higher colder location. The rest of the atmosphere, which is the vast majority of it, radiates from the same lower, warmer locations as before.

“The rest of the atmosphere, which is the vast majority of it,” doesn’t radiate at all!